“Tell me,” he said, his tone maddening, another delicious assault on her senses. “Tell me what you want.”
She didn’t even know. Didn’t know how to give voice to the pulsing, aching need he’d brought to life within her. He was the experienced one. Shouldn’t he know what she wanted? “I…” she faltered, not knowing what to say. All the suggestions that clamored to mind seemed far too improper. Far too unwise. “My lord, please.”
But he was determined to be wicked, it seemed. He found her waist, caressing her there when she would have preferred his attention elsewhere. Of course he must know it, rake that he was.
His face hovered close, so beautiful and arresting, his mouth perilously near to hers. “Where do you ache, darling?”
She went crimson, her cheeks as hot as if they’d been touched with live coals. “You know.”
“I want to hear it from you, little dove.” He leaned into her, pressing the length of his body to hers. The protrusion of his arousal, obvious beneath the thin layer of his dressing gown, sank into her skirts. She could almost feel him prodding her center, and it took her breath. “Tell me where.”
Did she dare? He was her husband. It was all very proper. She’d agreed to be his wife, fool that she was, even after he’d misled her. She’d agreed to all this, to everything. And worse, she longed for it. Yes, of course she dared, for she was just as wild and dark, as brazen and roguish on the inside as he was on the outside. It was only that she realized the wickedness of her own nature now for the first time. Perhaps he had well and truly debauched her. Perhaps she’d always been so flawed. She couldn’t be sure.
Clara took the palm that wasn’t flattened to the sinful lure of his broad chest and snagged his hand. Without sparing a thought for consequence, she slid that large, warm hand straight past the buttons on her bodice that he’d undone. Farther, even, beneath her corset cover, corset, and finally her shift. Until his hand curved around the fullness of her breast. Her nipple hardened into his palm.
She arched into him, never breaking his gaze. “There.”
He caught the sensitized nub between his thumb and finger, not wasting a breath of time. Leisurely, he rolled and pinched. “An excellent place to begin, love.”
And then his mouth lowered over hers. He fitted his lower lip between hers perfectly, the kiss slow and delicious, as though he had forever to savor her, as though he drank her like a rare wine. She kissed him back then, as if prodded into action for the first time. She didn’t want slow and languorous. She wanted fast and steady, a determined claiming, a fierce joining. She wanted him to make her his in every way possible.
Clara caught his lip between her teeth. She felt suddenly ravenous, as untamed and unpredictable as the man whose heart thudded beneath her inquisitive palm. She reached behind her to capture his other hand, tugging it from her hair. Dragging it between their straining bodies, she pressed it to the part of her that begged for him the most. They were separated by her crinoline and layers of fabric, but it was a mimicry of the way he’d touched her in the brougham the morning of their wedding. Perhaps he would appreciate the significance.
“And here,” she said into his mouth.
Good God.
He was nearly out of his skin. Her scent wrapped around him, orange and musk and everything delicious. Everything that was wonderfully, innately her. Clara. Wife. His. She was all those things encompassed in the finest, loveliest form he’d ever seen.
Julian had fucked more women in his life than he could count or remember. No one had ever made him feel the way he did now with her lush, beautiful innocence within his reach. Every part of her was perfection, from the sweet curve of her breast in his palm, to the fullness of her lips opening beneath his, to the sharp nip of her teeth. Her palm remained flattened to his chest, absorbing the frantic beats of his heart. She undid him, and he was helpless to stop the power she wielded.
Hell, he didn’t want to. She unleashed a savage side of him, a side he hadn’t realized until this moment that he possessed. He’d always been in control. He’d been the detached seducer, his skills honed from years of plying his trade. He knew how to make a woman come. He knew how to make her whimper and writhe beneath him, to prolong her pleasure and build her inevitable release into a shattering, beautiful thing.
But Clara was different. She stripped away every artifice, everything he’d believed about himself. All the games he would have played with her fled him. The blood rushed to his cock, lust roaring through him. This would not be the unhurried, controlled lovemaking he’d imagined the many times he’d envisioned in his debauched mind.
No.
This would be unrestrained fucking.
He would lose himself inside her, and he would relish the claiming.
But he would not hurt her, nor would he make her first time anything but as pleasurable as he knew how. He reminded himself that she was an untried virgin as he ground the heel of his palm into her skirts at her urging, seeking the very heart of her that he so longed to possess. Her dress was an unwanted impediment. He longed for nothing more than her naked and spread out before him, no fabric, boning, caging, or padding between them.
He kissed her again, full and deep and plundering, a mimicry of the way he would take her. And then he broke away, gazing down on the sheer loveliness of her rounded face. Her golden hair may as well have been a halo surrounding her goodness, her blue eyes heavy-lidded with desire, her rosebud lips swelled and darkened berry-red with his kiss. She flushed a pretty pink to rival the most glorious summer rose. Even the freckles dotting her nose entranced him.
“Here?” he asked, pressing deeper into the billowing contours of her gown, wanting hot, wet flesh rather than silk. He would run his tongue over every last bit of her delectable body once he had her out of these blasted trappings.
“Yes.” The single-word response hissed from her lips, telling him just how much he affected her.
Good, for she made him feel like a callow youth about to spend on the petticoats of the first woman he’d ever kissed. Those freckles of hers would drive him mad. His head had begun to pound, and he couldn’t be sure if it was from pent-up desire or the remnants of his injury, but he didn’t give a damn. He wasn’t about to allow anything to come between him and the fiery woman who’d haunted him since she’d first appeared in his study, asking him to marry her.
Her boldness, her fearlessness, had drawn him to her then. And it was those twin attributes that drew him to her now. She didn’t retreat from him. Though her flaming cheeks gave her away for the innocent she was, she didn’t hesitate. She wanted this joining every bit as much as he.
Julian kissed her again, plucking at her responsive nipple and pressing ever deeper into her skirts before he withdrew entirely, standing back to survey her. She was as beautiful as he’d ever seen her in a lush creation of silk, her expression glazed with passion, bodice deliciously askew. It occurred to him that he was scarcely clothed while she was as properly dressed as though she awaited a bevy of callers during her receiving hours. Most unfair, that.
A dark urge rose up within him. He’d never wanted another woman with the all-consuming hunger that spurred him now. As undeniably lovely as she was in her French gown, he wanted it off her. “Disrobe for me, little dove.”
Her eyes widened, a hand fluttering to her throat, the only evidence of her unease. “My lord?”
“Julian.” He wanted to hear his name on her lips, in the mellifluous drawl she didn’t bother to mask in his presence. It soothed his soul and made his cock ache at the same time. The devil of a thing. “You heard me, love. Remove your dress.”
She hesitated, looking adorably uncertain. “Julian then. I’m…unaccustomed to disrobing myself, and this dress is rather complicated in construction. Perhaps we ought to wait until later. The evening? Another day? I do believe I saw you wince as though your head—”
“Come now,” he interrupted, equal parts charmed and amused by her nervous attempt to procrastinate. �
�A Virginia lady such as yourself, one who can shoot and bluster, one who can infiltrate the study of an earl at midnight, one who tramps about London on her own wielding a pistol in her reticule, surely a lady such as this can manage to remove a mere gown on her own. Yes?”
He was testing her and the spark in her eyes said she knew it. Her gaze clung to his, her chin tipping up in her trademark show of defiance. “Of course I can. But your injury. It’s too soon. You did seem to be in some pain.”
“My injury is almost fully healed, fully recovered.” A lie, but he didn’t particularly give a damn about such a minor falsehood at the moment. “Perhaps I mistook your daring, then.”
If he’d learned anything about his new wife, it was that she never wanted to be seen as weak. Long ago, he’d mastered the art of using a woman’s weaknesses against her. It was how he’d managed to carry on for so long as he had. One of the many roles he’d been forced to play.
Only, he wasn’t playing a role now. He was hers. She was his.
“Take it off me.”
Her demand, as sudden and unexpected as it was arousing, took him aback. He stared at her, just narrowly refraining from catching her up in his arms and tearing her dress away like a ravaging beast. Gentle, he reminded himself. He would be gentle. He would take the greatest care with her. For she deserved that and so much more.
But the moment he touched the remainder of the buttons fastening her bodice, his good intentions shattered. He caught the gaping vee of her dismantled décolletage in both his hands and yanked. A shower of buttons rained to the carpet, mingling with her startled gasp.
“As you wish, little dove.” Her beautiful dress hung limply apart, revealing her embroidered corset cover. The sleeves were damned tight, clinging to her shoulders in an impediment he grew impatient to banish. He pulled again, and this time the sound of rending fabric filled the air. The sleeves went down at last, revealing soft porcelain flesh. Jesus, even her arms were beautiful, curved and feminine. He fought back the absurd desire to kiss the hinge of her elbow, to lick a path all the way to her shoulder. Her scent, bright and musky, filled his senses, even more potent now that so much of her gorgeous skin was revealed to him.
He wondered if she tasted as sweet as she smelled everywhere. Behind her knee? Her belly? The roundness of her thighs? Fuck, he had to know. Blood roared through his head, a river of lust pouring over his body, threatening to engulf him.
Dimly, he registered her protest.
“Lord Ravenscroft, you’ve ruined my new gown.”
What an intriguing moment for her to once again revert to polite formality. She was nervous, his little dove, her eyes wide. Perhaps she feared he’d take her as roughly as he’d stripped away half of her dress. He ought to reassure her, but any civility he pretended to possess had utterly fled him.
“You required me to take it off you.” The damn thing was still fastened tightly at her waist. He ripped a few more buttons and hooks, locating the ties of her crinoline and undoing them with scarcely more finesse. Down went her skirts, bodice, and dress shaper, landing in a muted swoosh around her feet. But it wasn’t enough. More fabric fell to the floor until she stood before him in only her corset, chemise, drawers, and stockings. He pulled her to him, cupping her face as gently as he could manage. “And so I obliged.”
She sputtered. “I didn’t tell you to ruin it, my lord.”
Even her dudgeon sent another arrow of heat directly to his cock. “No more ‘my lord,’ love.”
He kissed her then because he couldn’t go another second without feeling her sweet, yielding mouth beneath his. She opened. He raked his teeth over the fullness of her bottom lip before sinking his tongue inside. So sweet. Sweeter than he deserved.
Every part of him hungered to take her. To tear off her drawers, drag her chemise to her waist, take her to the carpet, and sink inside her. But he wrangled his wayward impulses. His reputation and indeed his living had been built upon bed sport. His prowess was unparalleled. He took his time, made his lover’s body sing with pleasure, relished in giving her what she’d paid for—the release no man before him had known or dared to give.
What was it about Clara that dragged him to the edge? What was it that made him want to rend and tear, to rut like a beast? To fill her with his cock and after that, with his seed? In an elemental sense she was no different than any other before her. She too had bought and paid for his services, after all, with her dowry and soon her virginity.
The thought cooled some of his ardor. He dragged his mouth from hers, kissed her jaw, her ear, ran his tongue over the defined whorl that nestled against her hair. An anomalous crudeness surged to life within him then, a need to shock her and perhaps shock even himself.
“Clara, sweet, innocent Clara,” he whispered into her ear. “I’m going to fuck you. I’m going to strip every last bit of covering away from you. And then I’m going to taste you everywhere. I’m going to make you spend all over my tongue first. Then all over my cock.”
His words should have sent her spinning away from him in retreat. Should have made her run, flee the chamber through the adjoining door to the safety of her own space. She was a maid, after all. Untried and pure aside from his own attempts to sway her to the darker side.
But instead she did something he least expected, his little dove. Her busy fingers, the fingers he’d watched on countless occasions fretting on the folds of her gown, discovered the knot keeping his dressing gown in place. And undid it. Then those fingers skated beneath the plackets of his robe, gliding over his bare chest with pure, unadulterated fire. Her nails grazed one of his nipples.
“Do it then, Julian.” Her voice was deep and throaty, at once a taunt and a dare.
So bold, his Virginian. Such audacity. As his surprise dispersed, he could sense her bravado for what it was, but that didn’t mean her actions and words didn’t have their intended effect upon him. His cock was rigid, and he was desperate to bury himself inside her so deep and hard that they both lost every last splinter of control.
The thin thread of his restraint snapped. She was small and fine-boned, and when he hauled her into his arms he scarcely felt the weight of her. But perhaps too that could be attributed to the rush of desire coursing through him, rendering him all but mindless. Every part of her was curved and luscious. He buried his face in the fragrant curls piled atop her head as he stalked to his bed with her. He’d never again be capable of smelling the scent of orange without going hard.
But it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but her, the blazing passion scorching the air, and the steps between where he stood and his bed. Six, as it turned out. Barely any distance at all but he rued each step for it stole seconds from him. Seconds where he could be upon her, stripping the rest of her undergarments away, parting her thighs.
Patience fled him.
He laid her upon the bed and allowed his dressing gown to fall away from his body, leaving him naked for her brilliant gaze. He’d never seen a lovelier sight than Clara half-dressed, stockings hugging her shapely calves, her ripe breasts about to spill from the top of her corset, mouth swollen from his kiss, and her gaze traveling all over him like a touch.
The ability to speak deserted him. Every practiced, pretty word vanished from his brain. Here he was, a man who’d fashioned fucking into an art, laid low by an inexperienced scrap of a woman. But then, words weren’t needed now anyway and his pride could bloody well go to the devil.
He joined her on the bed, and she reached for him, bringing him against her, holding him to her with a tenderness that undid him. He found her mouth, slanted his lips over hers, sank inside to drink in the dazzling wet heat of her. Sweet and delicious. He tore her corset cover away, his fingers tangling in the knot of her corset laces until it too was opened and gone. She helped him catch the hem of her chemise and shimmy it up over her body.
Finally. For the first time, he could see her glorious breasts unobstructed. No cloth hindrance now. Full and high, tipped with hard nipples a
s pink and inviting as her mouth. He lowered his head and took her into his mouth, sucking the peak, nipping it. A throaty moan wrung from her as her fingers tunneled into his hair, her nails raking his scalp.
Ah, Christ. She was a quick learner, his delectable tyro. He cupped her other breast, its yielding heaviness filling his palm as he rubbed the nipple with his thumb. His cock strained against the welcoming cradle of her cunny, reminding him he sought an even greater prize. He kissed his way down her creamy skin, his mouth learning the protrusion of her ribs, the curve of her waist, the hollow of her belly button. He pulled her drawers down over her hips, leaving her stockings in place, and pulled back to survey the bounty before him.
Pale thighs beckoned from above the wicked contrast of her black silk stockings. He swallowed as a fresh onslaught of lust careened through him.
At last, he could manage discourse. “Beautiful.”
A lone word and a vast understatement, torn from him. He skimmed her smooth hips, her warmth seeping into his palms. She was so soft, so perfect, and he needed to have her. To taste her. Gently, he began guiding her legs apart.
“Julian.” His Christian name again, a breathy drawl that sounded half rebuke, half plea. “You mustn’t.”
“I must.” He kissed her hip bone, thinking there was not a single part of her body he didn’t adore. “Relax, little dove.” His hand curved over her knee, still covered in silk, and urged it down to the mattress. She allowed him this liberty, giving in to his coax as her legs fell apart.
His hungry gaze sought the pink, glistening flesh of her cunny before traveling over her entire form. She was spread before him in erotic abandon, not a hair out of place in her coiffure, clad in nothing but her black stockings. He could gaze upon her like this a thousand times and it still wouldn’t be enough.
A strange heaviness shifted in his chest but he ignored it and bowed his head, worshipping her as she deserved. His tongue found the pearl of her pleasure. She tasted sweeter than he’d recalled from the brief hint in his carriage. Her hips jerked beneath him as he used his teeth. He soothed the nip with his tongue, gripped the swells of her arse in his palms, and angled her to him. His tongue played over her, seeking her wetness as though he could somehow take her in, consume her.
Restless Rake (Heart's Temptation Book 5) Page 17